Saturday, April 14, 2012

Quick and dirty sword racks

When we still used to build tentage Battalion Casualty Stations my job was to make a rifle rack out of some ropes - it was an important job as that allowed us to stow our rifles while we continued with our work.

(That's actually one of my medics undergoing assessment. The rifle rack would be a rope strung between the metal poles.)

Now I just recently found out about "unit fillers" while browsing the internet on Warhammer Fantasy Beastmen and Empire armies. For those who are not familiar with them, unit fillers are mini vignettes or dioramas on bases the size of several single troop bases, used to represent the equivalent number of figures that would have otherwise occupied that same frontage, presumably to save on the expense and time of actually buying and painting those figures - although I have seen at least one unit filler that contained the same number of figures it would have replaced. Like the mini-dioramas of Impetus bases and DBA/DBM camp and baggage elements, these unit filers add character to the armies the are included in.

Anyway, there I was cutting the tabs off the feet of my plastic GW Beastmen (the figures came with tabs but the bases that came with them did not have slots...) when it occurred to me that they would be useful for making... stuff.

Looking at the spare swords on the sprues of my Perry plastic WOTR figures, I decided to make simple sword racks. After some googling, I sat down in front of the TV and started work...

I started with a stable base and the uprights...

Then I cut a piece of crossbar that would fit nicely between the uprights, and carved notches in them with an Exacto knife...

Then I glued the swords into the notches, and simply glued the crossbar to the base.

Since everything was made of polystyrene, gluing was clean and fast. But then I thought a two-sword rack was a little impractical, so I decided to make a bigger one, this time with a different type of base.

A spray of primer and a quick paint job should see them ready for the table.